Arthur Clarke: Imperial Earth

Now the old question arises: Where do we go from here? The stars are as remote as ever; our first probes, after two centuries of travel, have yet to reach Proxima Centauri, the Sun’s closest neighbor. Though our telescopes can now see to the limits of space, no man has yet to set foot on far Persephone, which we could have reached at any time during the last hundred years...

Is it true, as many have suggested, that the frontier has again closed? Men have believed that before, and always they have been wrong. We can laugh now at those early-twentieth-century pessimists who lamented that there were no more worlds to discover—at the very moment when Goddard and Korolev and von Braun were playing with their first primitive rockets. And earlier still, just before Columbus opened the way to this continent, it must have seemed to the peoples of Europe that the future could hold nothing to match the splendors of the past.

I do not believe that we have come to the end of History, and that what lies ahead is only an elaboration and extension of our present powers, on planets already discovered. Yet it cannot be denied that this feeling is now widespread and makes itself apparent in many ways. There is an unhealthy preoccupation with the past, and an attempt to reconstruct or relive it. Not, I hasten to add, that this is always bad—what we are doing now proves that it is not.

We should respect the past, but not worship it. While we look back upon the four Centennials that lie behind us, we should think also of those that will be celebrated in the years to come. What of 2376, 2476... 2 7 76, a full thousand years after the birth of the Republic? How will the people of those days remember us? We remember the United States chiefly by Apollo; can we bequeath any comparable achievement to the ages ahead?

There are many problems still to be solved, on all the planets. Unhappiness, disease—even poverty—still exist. We are still far from Utopia, and we may never achieve it. But we know that all these problems can be solved, with the tools that we already possess. No pioneering, no great discoveries, are necessary here. Now that the worst evils of the past have been eliminated, we can look elsewhere, with a clear conscience, for new tasks to challenge the mind and inspire the spirit.

Civilization needs long-range goals. Once, the Solar System provided them, but now we must look beyond. I am not speaking of manned travel to the stars, which may still lie centuries ahead. What I refer to is the quest for intelligence in the universe, which was begun with such high hopes more than three centuries ago—and has not yet succeeded.

You are all familiar with CYCLOPS, the largest radio telescope on Earth. That was built primarily to search for evidence of advanced civilizations. It transformed astronomy; but despite many false alarms, it never detected a single intelligent message from the stars. This failure has done much to turn men’s minds inward from the greater universe, to concentrate their energies upon the tiny oasis of the Solar System...

Could it be that we are looking in the wrong place? The wrong place, that is, in the enormously wide spectrum of radiations that travel between the stars.

All our radio telescopes have searched the short waves—centimeters, or at most, meters—in length. But what of the long and ultralong waves—not only kilometers but even megameters from crest to crest? Radio waves of frequencies so low that they would sound like musical notes if our ears could detect them.

We know that such waves exist, but we have never been able to study them, here on Earth. They are blocked, far out in the fringes of the Solar System, by the gale of electrons that blows forever from the Sun. To know what the universe is saying with these vast, slow undulations, we must build radio telescopes of enormous size, beyond the limits of the Sun’s own billion-kilometer-deep ionosphere—that is, at least as far out as the orbit of Saturn. For the first time, this is now possible. For the first time, there are real incentives for doing so...

We tend to judge the universe by our own physical size and our own time scale; it seems natural for us to work with waves that we could span with our arms, or even with our fingertips. But the cosmos is not built to these dimensions; nor, perhaps, are all the entities that dwell among the stars.

These giant radio waves are more commensurate with the scale of the Milky Way, and their slow vibrations are a better measure of its eon-long Galactic Year. They may have much to tell us when we begin to decipher their messages.

How those scientist-statesmen Franklin and Jefferson would have welcomed such a project! They would have grasped its scope, if not its technology—for they were interested in every branch of knowledge between heaven and Earth.

The problems they faced, five hundred years ago, will never rise again. The age of conflict between nations is over. But we have other challenges, which may the tax us to the utmost. Let us be thankful that the universe can always provide great goals beyond ourselves, and enterprises to which we can pledge our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

Duncan Makenzie closed the beautifully designed souvenir book—as masterpiece of the printer’s art, such as had not been seen for centuries and might never be seen again. Only five hundred copies had been produced—one for every year. He would carry his back in triumph to Titan, where for the rest of his life it would be among his most cherished possessions.

Many people had complimented him on his speech, enshrined forever in these pages—and, much more accessibly, in library memories and information banks throughout the Solar System. Yet he had felt embarrassed to receive these plaudits, for in his heart he knew he could never have conceived that address; he was little more than a medium, passing on a message from the dead. The words were his, but all the thoughts were Karl’s.

How astonished, he told himself wryly, all his friends on Titan must have been, when they watched the ceremony! Perhaps it had been slightly inappropriate to use such a forum as this for what might be considered self-serving propaganda—even special pleading on behalf of his own world. But Duncan had a clear conscience, and as yet there had been no criticism on this score. Even those who were baffled by his thesis had been grateful for the excitement he had injected into all the routine formalities.

And even if his speech was only a seven-day wonder to the general public, it would not be forgotten. He had planted a seed; one day it would grow—on barren Mnemosyne.

Meanwhile, there was a slight practical problem, though it was not yet urgent. This splendid volume, with its thick vellum, and its tooled leather binding, weighed about five kilograms.

The Makenzies hated waste and extravagance. It would be pleasant to have the book on the voyage home, but excess baggage to Titan was a hundred solars a kilo...

It would have to go back by slow boat, on one of the empty tankers—UNACCOMPANIED FREIGHT—MAY BE STOWED IN VACUUM...

Dr. Yehudi ben Mohammed did not look as if he belonged in a modern hospital, surrounded by flickering life-function displays, Comsole readouts, whispering voices from hidden speakers, and all the aseptic technology of life and death. In his spotless white robes, with the double circlet of gold cord around his headdress, he should have been holding court in a desert tent, or scanning the horizon from the back of his camel for the first glimpse of an oasis.

Duncan remembered how one of the younger doctors had commented, during his first visit: “Sometimes I think El Hadj believes he’s a reincarnation of Saladin and Lawrence of Arabia.” Although Duncan did not understand the full flavor of the references, this was obviously said more in affectionate jest that in criticism. Did the surgeon, he wondered, wear those robes in the operating theater? The would not be inappropriate there; and certainly they did not interfere with the feline grace of his movements.